Huntington Bank celebrates its first wave of Best in Business honorees at its office in Troy.MLive Detroit

TROY, MI – Officials at Huntington Bank said they have found an effective marketing tool. They cull their commercial banking customers, select ones that are growing and contributing to the Southeast Michigan’s economy, and then feature it on WJR AM radio in spot called “Best in Business.”

“The idea is that we don’t advertise anything about Huntington, we don’t make an offer, we don’t quote a rate, we don’t highlight products,” said Rhan Rampton, a commercial marketing executive based at the bank’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

It's a two-way street, beneficial to both the bank and its customers, said Rmapton, who is credited for helping to launch the program in Southeast Michigan.

Instead of advertising its rates or products, Huntington Bank East Michigan Region President Michael Fezzey interviews business leaders and then features them on the “Best in Business” spot on WJR radio. More than 60 businesses have been highlighted thus far, and bank officials said at a ceremony honoring the inaugural class that it would likely expand the program to other markets in the six states where it operates.

“When you think about it, what a bank does on a day-to-day basis is evaluate companies,” Rampton said. “So why not highlight them for being good customers, for being good businesses?”

Companies that the banks select range from small family businesses to billion-dollar corporations, Rampton said.

Joe McClure, co-owner of McClure's Pickles, said he was happy to receive the acknowledgement. His company opened a line of credit with Huntington to help build a new production facility in Detroit, he said.

The Best in Business program has made sense for Fezzey, a past president of the WJR station. He joined Huntington Bank at the beginning of 2011.

The common mantra by some in the business community that the one that banks are not lending to small businesses since the financial crisis took hold has not held true for Huntington Bank in Southeast Michigan, Fezzey told MLive Wednesday, when asked about the perception of tight creidt. He said the bank has been the top Small Business Adminstration lender for the past four years.

“Where others have feared t, they weren’t lending, we saw that as an opportunity,” he said. “We believe deeply in the turnaround that was starting to occur."

Huntington, which has $56.2 billion in assets, has 330 outlets in Michigan, including 64 in the Metro Detroit area of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston counties. Its commercial and industrial loans stood at $11.1 billion at Sept. 30, 2012, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, compared to $9.2 billion at the same time in 2011.

Fezzey said that over the past two years, Huntington has deployed more than $2 billion in commercial lending in the Southeast Michigan market.

The bank has also spent some money on the Best in Business program.

“It’s our largest single expenditure in the marketplace,” Fezzey said. “We know every morning at 7:30, we know the audience that's listening at 7:30 in the morning – it’s a very powerful group of people.”

Rampton did not say how much the bank spends on the program, but said it is a "significant, six-figure number."

Fred Yaffe, chairman of Southfield-based The Yaffe Group, has been in the marketing business for some 50 years. His firm was among the inaugural class of Best in Business honorees.

"It’s a great vehicle for an institution like a bank that’s going ahead and talking about the fact that their open and they're lending money to small business,” he said of the program.